Aug 11, 2015

Winter 1970: Grateful Dead News & Interview

The best word is the group is still on the scene, setting a
pace in rock, and in a sense, liberating the music so that it can go in new and
different directions, changing with the changing times.

The other words are more concrete – news about the group’s
latest album, a tentative movie, a country-western sub-group, “New Riders of
the Purple Sage,” and Grateful Dead statements on the world in general and rock
music in particular.

The new album is a two-record Warner-Reprise production
called Live Dead. It’s the group's fourth and the best so far – best, because the
recording quality is superb and it was recorded “live.” “They said you couldn’t
record the essence of the Dead,” Jon MacIntire, the group’s road manager,
explained. “But this album does it.

“The other albums got a lot of musical things across,
particularly Anthem of the Sun. Aoxomoxoa did a different thing, but Live Dead
really shows the group as it is. It’s as close as you can come to the Dead
without actually being on stage with them.”

Listeners seem to agree. MacIntire noted the album sold
better than the others, 30,000 one recent week (a sizable figure for an
avant-garde rock group like the Dead). Songs for a fifth album are being taped
this month. Its release date will depend on the markets, yet to be submitted
art work, and other factors – perhaps coming out by early or mid-summer.

“Recording is different,” MacIntire added. “There’s a lot
more work involved in making an album than in getting down there and just
recording it – a lot more chores to be done But we enjoy it. The people who
follow the Grateful Dead know they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t enjoy it – or
consider it worth doing.”

The lack of an audience somewhat hinders a group like the
Dead in recording, but not much. Bob Weir, guitarist-vocalist, pointed out even
when there is no actual audience, there is the feeling there must be one somewhere.
“There’s no music that’s ever played that’s not for people – even if you can’t
see them there,” Weir said. “So when we’re playing and there’s nobody around
us, we’re either playing for ourselves or some future audience.”

Their upcoming movie is Zechariah, described as a kind of
fantasy cowboy flick with a plot line closely resembling Herman Hesse’s
Siddhartha. Costuming has been completed for the Dead; filming may begin in
April, either in Mexico
or in the old back lots of MGM.

Zechariah was written by screen veteran Joe Massot (“a good
flowing script,” former actor MacIntire reported), and will be produced by
George England, known for his productions of Shoes of the Fisherman and The
Ugly American among others.

“If it’s done as we originally heard about it,” MacIntire
said, “the movie really won’t be a western, but will be an interesting piece of
surrealism. For example, when the Dead ride in on their horses they’re wearing
holsters with electric guitars shoved in them and electric amplifiers strapped
on the backs of the horses.

“The movie’s star (Ginger Baker) is Zechariah – the Dead
have their segment of the picture when Zechariah interacts with them, lusts
after the kind of lives they live and wants to be a part of them. We’re really
looking forward to filming it.”

The recently released album was recorded approximately a
year ago. There is an emerging country-western flavor to the Dead’s music
however, which isn’t that clear in the album, primarily because the
country-western aspect is a fairly recent development.

For the Dead, it started about the time leader Jerry Garcia
got one of the finest pedal steel guitars (“a tailor-made, beautiful
instrument”) and began playing it with the Dead, doing a few originals and old
standards having country-western connotations.

But the new development is Garcia, old friends John Dawson
and David Nelson, and fellow Grateful Dead musicians Phil Lesh, bassist, and
Mickey Hart on drums. They’re known as the “New Riders of the Purple Sage.”

The New Riders recently cut a demonstration tape for
Warner-Reprise and the present schedule often finds the Dead playing on
weekends, the “New Riders” on weekdays.

“They’re going all around to various beer houses and country
and western, folk oriented, collegiate type places,” MacIntire said. “But the
ideal is to book them into hard-core country redneck places where they can get
the feed-back they need from the people who really know country-western music
and know it intuitively.”

Although Garcia no longer plays the pedal steel guitar with
the Dead (saving it for the “New Riders” material), the presence of the
country-western influence is notable in new Grateful Dead music. The fine,
really tremendous hard-driving rock sounds are still present, but some
melodies, words and harmonies seem simpler, purer, reflecting the new
influence.

Audiences have heard the Grateful Dead for about five years
now. The group’s followers can trace them from beginning days with “Mother
Macready’s” through the times they were known as the “Warlocks” into the first
acid tests and up to the present. They have been successful, but in some ways
they wonder if it’s been success with a capital “S.”

“We’re not all that successful,” Garcia said, “yet we are
very successful. Our records are not tremendously big sellers, but we’ve got a
reputation for being musically good – and we’ve influenced a lot of groups.

“And we’ve also got a following – an enlightened minority
that speak the same language we do. They hear our music and we can specifically
communicate with them.”

Lesh lovingly referred to them as the “Grateful Dead
freaks.”

Whoever they are, they’re special – and usually a little
older, at least not teenyboppers. They primarily are in San
Francisco, New York, Boston and Chicago,
and they do more than listen to the Dead. They also watch what the Dead are
doing. They watch how the Dead’s “family” (which now has grown to approximately
50 persons) moves along, where everyone is living.

The Grateful Dead enjoy their music – and they find the
freedom they need as individuals within the confines of the group.

Constanten (“T.C.”) explained: “It’s that way because we
have agreed to cooperate. That was the idea we started with – that we had a
band, not just a bunch of soloists, but a band playing music together.

“There have been kind of agreements as to who plays which
role musically in relation to the others. The agreements have been defined not
only by what instrument one plays, but how he plays it and what he does with
it…the agreements are tacit and verbal.

“Of course, it isn’t that rigid. What we’ll do is get
together – everybody will start to add to a piece whatever it is they hear in
it. That will be going on for a dozen or so performances and then it will
settle into something that is sort of like a mood…

“We can get bored with it. Then we’ll resurrect it much
later and it will have undergone a transformation just because we’ve undergone
a transformation.”

And the role of the individual musician?

“I personally feel the musician has a role of a fiddler, a
jester, an entertainer,” Weir said – starting off a conversation that found the
musician as prophet, reporter, free agent and on and on and on…

“He’s also a communicator,” Garcia added.

“Sometimes you can look into the audience and see a
particular face and it’s saying something to you… Sometimes you see someone’s
soul there. Not long ago, some cat jumped up on the stage and picked up the
microphone and threw it into the crowd. It was part of the running play of
violence that is close to us all the time – it’s like that play of violence got
up on the stage with us.”

“Rock music should be spreading the news – having fun,”
McKiernan added.

And Constanten noted: “Rock music comments on what’s
happening right then with a striking applicability to what it has to see. A
really good song says the truth to you in any of a billion circumstances… It’s
sort of the voice of a square dance caller not saying, ‘do-si-do and dance
around the table,’ but saying all the changes people go through…”

And protest songs?

“Protest songs are awfully dated,” Constanten answered. “As
I listen back to them, they seem almost irrelevant. Protest music, white music,
black music – this color thing is like an irrelevant trip. We are for earth
music – expressing a larger concern for the whole world.”

“Protest means dissent,” Garcia noted. “Dissent means
disharmony. Disharmony means nothing gets done. You don’t have to go protesting
in music. Be the best you can with your music – the best rubs off.

“The big thing now is ‘Danger, danger, poison earth’ – and
things are getting out of control. That’s the only thing important happening.”

Lesh added: “We’re really interested in an Earth People’s
Park Plan to get land where people can live in an ecological sane manner – and
free. Five years ago it was a social problem, but this ecological problem is
way more important because if it isn’t solved, there won’t be any tomorrows…

“We’re lending ourselves to create a reality out of this
idea. The people in our community – people who are planet minded, earth minded
– got to us. We’re giving our energies, our comments, playing benefits for it –
although sometimes it’s more fun to get in the skull sessions about it.

2 comments:

A good article about what the Dead are up to - it was written in Jan/Feb '70 (Constanten was still in the band through January, but the February recording sessions "are being taped this month").It's possible that the interviewing took place in late '69, which would account for some statements that seem out-of-date by early 1970 (as I'll mention). Circus was based in New York City, so most likely the interview happened on one of the Dead's trips there.

Workingman's Dead would be released in June. Though Harris had seen the Dead recently, he doesn't try to describe the new material, just saying, "There is an emerging country-western flavor to the Dead’s music...the fine, really tremendous hard-driving rock sounds are still present, but some melodies, words and harmonies seem simpler."

Harris doesn't seem to be aware that the New Riders had briefly opened for the Dead at some summer '69 shows; at this point the two groups only play separately. One surprising thing in this account (stating that the New Riders play on weekdays in "various beer houses and country & western, folk oriented, collegiate type places") is that the New Riders aren't currently known to have been playing anywhere at all in Jan/Feb '70, but were on hiatus! Possibly Jon McIntire was referring to the fall of '69, when they were very active, but the article asserts that this is "the present schedule" and gives the impression they're still playing places weekly. A small mystery - at any rate, McIntire was keen to publicize the New Riders here.The New Riders had made a demo for Warners in November '69, but apparently they were rejected, and wouldn't record an album til the end of 1970, finally signing to Columbia in 1971.

This could be the only contemporary source for the Dead's involvement in Zachariah. McNally writes a bit about it (p.307 of his book), though he places it in '69 near the beginning of Lenny Hart's management. Timewise that doesn't seem right, since here it's described as an upcoming project (with filming not supposed to start til April '70). But this article may already have been out of date - in the 1/3/70 show, the Dead introduce Mason's Children saying, "This here song we wrote for a movie... We decided not to do it finally." McIntire still seems excited by the prospect of the movie here, though ("we're really looking forward to filming it"). Anyway, the Dead bowed out (so did Ginger Baker), and Country Joe & the Fish took their place.

There's a brief description of "Dead freaks," who at this point are said to mainly exist only in a few big cities, and to be more than commonly interested in the Dead & what the band has to say. Strikingly, they're "usually a little older" (not the general teenage rock crowd), which correlates with the Feb '70 interview I just posted, where the interviewer comments that Dead audiences "tend to be a little older." (Which perhaps just means generally college-age or people in their 20s.)

Occasionally in these early interviews Garcia will speak up for the ecology and the growing danger to the planet, as he does here. Lesh chips in as well, saying that the Dead are "giving their energies" to the ecological movement, and playing benefits for it - which seems to be a considerable exaggeration, if not an outright lie.

Garcia also has an interesting statement: "We’ve got a reputation for being musically good – and we’ve influenced a lot of groups." This ties in with his comments elsewhere that the Dead were 'a musician's band' or 'popular among musicians,' but strikes me as a little strange - how many groups had the Dead actually influenced in the '60s? (Then again, in Feb '70 the Dead played with Fleetwood Mac & the Allmans, who both bore some Dead influence at that point, or at least Garcia might think so.)

(Also: the guy Garcia mentions who jumped onstage & threw a microphone could possibly be the guy we hear in the 12/29/69 Good Lovin', in Boston.)

TC left the group at the end of January, but this isn't reported - in fact, there's a full-page picture of him at the Continental organ. What's surprising is that he's part of the interview - probably the most he was ever quoted when he was actually in the band. He has quite a bit of interest to say about their music, and sounds different than he did in later years. (Pigpen chimes in with a sentence too, about as much as he was ever willing to give in interviews.)